Learning as I age

Month: October 2014

I have been writing continuously for three months’s now-starting August. I felt I needed to celebrate the fact that I kept up with it for 3 months’.

I have become more confident because I write. I can write fast and type fast without mistakes now. I have a huge list of friends which I never had before and they belong to so many countries. I feel like I belong, at last. All of you feel like family.

In October, I have been busy. I was in Philadelphia and I really enjoyed myself. My daughter and I, we explored the city on foot for about a week. The weather was unusually good for an October day. We went on the duck tour, took a hop-on, hop- off bus ride, followed Benjamin Franklin’s footsteps, marvelled at his inventions, visited the Independence Hall, took a ride on the Delaware river and even marvelled at the architecture at the waterworks on the Schuylkill River.

Now I am back to writing. I must confess it felt good to be free of the computer for some days’. I needed that vacation and the exercise. One of the advantages of being on vacation is that you can obtain material for your writing during your visits to various places and your observations of the people around you.

The weather is gradually becoming better here and my plants are flourishing. We live in an unusual climate where plants prefer to grow and flower during the winter. Like my flowers, I wish to continue my writing journey right through the winter.

I have been on the IQS diet for about 3 months and there are remarkable changes in my skin and my energy levels. I recommend this to everyone.

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It is October already. The year has flown, rather fast. Especially the last two months. It seems that since I took up writing, the days have gotten busier and I don’t have time for anything else. But I wouldn’t have traded this experience for anything.

Just yesterday I watched a TED Talks video on the “lollipop moment”. The speaker spoke about how anybody can be a leader. He defined leader as anyone who influences anyone else. Leadership has been defined as “the process of social influence, which maximises the efforts of others towards the achievement of goals.” The speaker describes how one girl, who was standing in queue, waiting to get admitted to a college ( but in a dilemma as to whether to join or come back after a year), was influenced by him. He called this moment in time, when he unwittingly influenced this girl as “his lollipop moment.”

Coincidentally, all he did was to give her a lollipop from a bucket, in support of his cause for “cystic fibrosis.” He never knew what influence that lollipop created in that girl, until some years later, when he was graduating from the very same college. This girl, came up to him and said, “Dudley, you don’t know me but it’s only because of you that I am in this college and studying here still.” She went on to describe the “ lollipop moment” in her life when she decided to get enrolled in that college, rather than go back home.

The speaker says how everyone of us is a leader in his own way. I have been wondering if I have ever influenced anyone in my life. Perhaps I have and perhaps I haven’t. I may never know. But what I know is when I have had ” lollipop moments”, when people have influenced me.

About two months back, I had a “lollipop moment” myself. Some one whom I never knew sent me an article to review for a journal. At that time, I had been out of a job for about a year. My morale was at an all time low. This one piece of paper she sent me to review, made me think and take a career changing decision. i started writing.I started reading about writing. I started this blog. I made new friends. I who was a diffident and shy person, has now become so empowered by my writing that I can post my innermost feelings boldly on the internet.

The important thing is letting that person who influenced us know of their influence in our lives and thanking them for the “lollipop moment“. according to the speaker. Fortunately for me, I had corresponded with the person who set me off my writing career and thanked her. Her response was surprise that she had made a difference in someone’s life, 6000 miles away, not having seen the person ever. But she was thrilled to hear of my new venture.

Now I am looking out to create “ lollipop moments.” Either in my life or in the life of the people I interact with everyday.

What do you think makes a person beautiful? Really truly beautiful…think about it for a minute. What is the first thing that comes to mind? The very first thing, you know the thing before we try to think of a more meaningful description of beauty. Is it a physical trait? Or an internal characteristic? If we had to change one thing about ourselves to make us more beautiful what would it be? For you, would it an outward change or an inner change?

Beauty in our society seems to stem from outward appearances not someone’s inner spiritual, emotional or intellectual traits. Why? Why is it that how we look is what we often feel we need to base our personal beauty on? The saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” stands true for some, but for many this idea of beauty is based on societies popular idea of beauty…

First of all, rejection is not really rejection. It’s simply someone telling you, “What you’ve given me is not exactly what I need at this time.”

It has nothing to do with whether it’s good or not. And if the agent does take the time to list some areas that need improvement, that’s even better;that could be your cue to send it in again, after making the suggested changes.

What you have to understand is that the needs of agents and publishers are extremely specific. Agents know their markets well. They know what they can sell, and to whom. So they’re not looking for just anything; no matter how good it is. In certain cases, you may very well have sent the right thing to the wrong agent.

recently, lamenting that he had sent out no fewer than twenty-five query letters to agents about his new book, and didn’t hear back from a single one. He seemed about to give up. Twenty-five! I didn’t want to break the news to him that he had about seventy-five more to go until he had any room at all to complain.

Now you see how rejection can weed out the weak: Stephen King, one of the most famous and successful authors of our time, got more rejections than the total number of query letters, this other person even sent out.

Rejection is an inevitable part of a writer’s life. So take heart, and redouble your efforts. Start a collection; frame rejection letters and hang them on your wall. Make light of it and embrace it. After all, the more you do something you’re afraid of, the less it affects you. Remember, the most successful writers are the ones who took rejection again and again, each time getting up back up and saying, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”